The three legs to slow down ageing for me are: Intellectual Curiosity, Physical Stretching, and Emotional and Spiritual Development.
Sorry, no miracle “elixir of youth” panacea here, simply a though centred on the old leadership idea of the “three-legged stool”.
That idea is around the thought of what is most stable to sit on. When you think about it, the most stable is not a four legged chair, but a three legged stool. If one leg is shorter than the others, the stool is still stable. So, applying that elsewhere, find three things that you need for a platform.
When it comes to ageing, I have met many people some decades older than my 55 years who are highly sharp, vital and energetic. In most cases, this is centred on an intellectual curiosity that drives them to keep an active mind and to keep talking to and listening to other people so they can both learn and share. Without curiosity, though, we can see again and again that we can age mentally fast as we grow older in years.
However, intellectual curiousity is one leg of the stool, but two more are needed to provided that platform that can centre us and keep us ageing relatively slowly.
To me the second leg of the tool is absolutely about the physical. With the caveat of checking what is medically safe first, if you are fit now keep working on being fit to slow down ageing. Stay physically active, including stretching yourself. Raise the heart rate, often, which means more than only walking, or, at the least, brisk walking to get your heart rate over 100bpm. Do physical resistance work, whether that be weights in the gym, body weight resistance such as yoga or mat pilates. As for me, as an example, I ride my bike often, typically with at least one ride a week of over ninety minutes at average heart rate of 130bpm or higher. I also do pilates equipment work every two weeks. Oh, and I walk, a lot, but for reasons beyond the physical.
That last point leads me to the third leg of the stool. Emotional and Spiritual Growth. As we get older, we often will have more time to ourselves. This is also an opportunity to learn and grow and, let’s be honest, mortality becomes more present in our minds, so this can be a hindrance or, if we choose, something that frees us to learn and grown in awareness of self and the world around us.
In short, then, the three legs of slowing ageing for me are:
- Intellectual Curiosity
- Physical Stretching
- Emotional and Spiritual Development
In closing, this brings me to considering how firmly Chip Conley has placed the idea of Growth Mindset at the centre of the Modern Elder Academy curriculum. As Chip distills from Carol Dweck’s book: “Growth = Improve”.
If we all have a growth mindset and keep focussing on those three legs of the stool, we will indeed slow ageing.